Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets - Libcom

I S4 KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS
derived). The desire to promote evolution in this direction
determines the scientific as well as the social and artistic
activity of the anarchist. And this activity, in its turn
precisely on account of its falling in with the development
of society in this direction, becomes a source of increased
vitality, vigor, sense of oneness with mankind and it best
vital forces.
It therefore becomes a source of increased vitality and happiness
for the individual.
THE ANARCHIST IDEAL AND THE PRECEDING REVOLUTIONS
Anarchism originated, as has already been said, from the
demands of practical life.
At the time of the great French Revolution of 1789-1793.
Godwin had the opportunity of himself seeing how the govermental
authority created during the revolution and by the
revolution itself acted as a retarding force upon the revolutionary
movement. And he knew too what was then taking
place in England. under cover of Parliament,-the confiscation
of public lands, the kidnapping of poor workhouse children
by factory agents and their deportation to weavers'
mills, where they perished wholesale. He understood that
a government, even the government of the "One and Undivided"
Jacobinist Republic would not bring about the
necessary revolution; that the revolutionary government itself,
from the very fact of its being a guardian of the State, and
of the privileges every State has to defend, was an obstacle
to emancipation; that to insure the success of the revolution,
people ought to part, first of all, with their belief in law,
authority, uniformity, order, property, and other superstitions
inherited by us from our servile past. And with this purpose
in view he wrote Palitical Justice.
The theorist of anarchism who followed Godwin-Proud.
hon-had himself lived through the Revolution of 1848 and
had seen with his own eyes the crimes perpetrated by the
revolutionary republican government, and the impotence of
MODERN SCIENCE AND ANARCHISM 155
state socialism. Fresh from the impressions of what he had
witnessed, Proudhon penned his admirable works, A General
Idea of the Social Revolution and Confessions of a Revolutionist,
in which he boldly advocated the abolition of the
State and proclaimed anarchism.
And finally the idea of anarchism reappeared again in the
International Working Men's Association, after the revolution
that was attempted in the Paris Commune of IS7I. The
eyes of many were opened by the complete failure of the
Council of the Commune and its incapacity to act as a revolutionary
body-although it consisted, in due proportion, of
representatives of every revolutionary faction of the time
and, on the other hand, by the incapacity of the London
General Council of the International and its ludicrous and
even harmful pretension to direct the Paris insurrection' by
orders sent from England. They led many members of the
International, including Bakunin, to reflect upon the harmfulness
of every kind of authority, of government--even
when it had been as freely elected as that of the Commune
and the International Working Men's Association. A few
months later the resolution, passed by the same General Council
of the Association at a secret conference held in London
in 1871 instead of at an annual congress, made the dangers of
having a government in the International still more evident.
By this dire resolution they decided to turn the entire labor
movement into another channel and to convert it from an
economic revolutionary movement-from a direct struggle
of the workingmen's organizations against capitalism-into
an elective parliamentary and political movement. This
decision led to open revolt on the part of the Italian, Spanish,
Swiss, and partly also of the Belgian Federations against the
London General Council, and out of this rebellion modern
anarchism subsequently developed.
Every time, then, the anarchist movement sprang up in
:t:Csponse to the lessons of actual life and originated from the
practical tendencies of events. And, under the impulse thus
given it. anarchism set to work out its theoretic, scientific